


them, together

by the_garbage_will_do



Series: teensy reylo fixes [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Calligraphy, Canon Compliant, F/M, Fix-It, Implied Gray Jedi Ben Solo, Loneliness, Pining, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Spoilers, World Between Worlds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-24 22:14:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22065214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_garbage_will_do/pseuds/the_garbage_will_do
Summary: On Exegol, Ben fades into the Force. He awakes, solid and warm and alive, in the temple on Ahch-To.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: teensy reylo fixes [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1633153
Comments: 10
Kudos: 90
Collections: The_Multishipper_Post_TROS_Happy_Place_Collection





	them, together

**Author's Note:**

> In this fic, Palpatine severely damaged and/or broke the dyad bond when he tried to suck energy from it. I also assume that the Force ghosts either cannot access Ben or choose not to.
> 
> Written for the-scavenger-and-young-solo, as part of Reylo Secret Santa. Happy new year!

Ben gathers Rey into his arms and reaches into the Force. It surges powerful through Exegol, an electric current that gathers around the two of them and swirls in ancient patterns he has never known. He begs it. He pleads with it for the power that had eluded his grandfather. When it acquiesces, Ben’s power flows to Rey though the wreckage of their bond, and she rises.

He smiles at the sight.

The smile stretches his face; he imagines his skin cracking like overstretched rubber under the strain of his joy. He thought happiness lost, locked away in his childhood. But she kisses him and he drowns in her light, in the light, in the Force calling him towards a more blinding light than he has ever known—

He falls.

.

He awakes on fractured gray rock.

His bones crack loud as he pushes himself up. In company he would be embarrassed, but he finds himself in a cave alone. Beside him lies a still pool. Underneath it, a mosaic of white and black swirled in harmony.

He rises to his feet and staggers to the mouth of the cave and finds a landscape of wild green and an ocean beyond it. A short walk reveals that he is wholly surrounded by the sea. He is stranded upon an island.

He knows this place.

Ahch-To. He stands in the ruins of the first Jedi Temple, in a world of green he first knew in Rey’s dreams, then in her memories.

He begins to run.

He finds the huts soon enough, squat crude structures made of gray rocks, their placement so seemingly random he fears a strong wind will down them. One wall has a rough patch where Rey shot it, the wound standing out like a scab mid-healing, and he runs towards it as if drawn by fate.

“Rey?”

Their bond had first linked them from here, when Rey was in this very hut. He crashes in and falls back onto the same bed where she had sat. As the window throws the same crescent of sunlight across his face, he calls.

“Rey!”

Nothing.

.

Ben panics.

He stalks out of the hut and calls again, to no avail. With one ill-starred clench of a fist he crumples a neighboring hut and thus learns he’s not entirely alone. A clan of nuns with flowing veils and the faces of fish descend to give him a dressing down Hux could only dream of matching. Through telepathy he learns that they knew Luke and tolerated none of this brooding from him either. Ben storms away mid-squawk.

He roves around the island, eyes peeled for any sign of a ship or a communication device. He finds nothing, no sign of development from the past millennium. As he roams he begs the Force for one more act of mercy, that the world might go strangely quiet and abruptly narrow his focus to Rey, that he might turn around and find her within reach. 

All he gets is the endless quiet of the island, the ocean lapping in the distance.

.

After nightfall he finds a second cave.

Rey had warned him about a place of seductive darkness. He finds it by feel, dives smoothly into the black waters, his descent into the dark practiced and elegant.

He approaches the frosted mirror.

Behind him appear a thousand spectral copies of himself, trussed up by black threads like puppet strings. In an instant the threads jerk, contorting all his selves into grotesque positions. Yet they then snap one by one until all his selves collapse together and a single red string emerges, tying his hand to someone behind him.

He turns and finds a phantom of Rey, waiting in the cracked mirror.

He tries to reach out, but lightning strikes. She and the string turn to ash, and he crumples alone on the ground, tempted once more by Kylo Ren's recklessness. He nearly clenches a fist and wrecks the cave, nearly stamps his foot and splits the entire island.

He instead drags himself back to the hut where they had touched hands. Allows himself to weep.

.

Daybreak.

The madness of the night passes. He wakes to yearning and a touch— imagined no doubt, and impossibly gentle on his fingertips.

.

He sits on a rock overlooking the ocean, one leg curled under him, the other dangling off. A far cry from any proper Jedi pose, but it brings him a long-forgotten clarity. The Force is not done with him yet.

From his mother’s womb, he had been a plaything, forced to break and kneel and dance at the Emperor’s command. And though he had his excuses, the truth remains: his ensuing sins have darkened the whole galaxy. He has broken bonds and set fires. He cannot return to the galaxy, cannot leave the Unknown Regions, cannot escape even this lonely island until he has done his penance.

The Force has judged him. Sentenced him to a Jedi killer's exile, an ironic solitary confinement to the first Jedi temple.

It is sanctuary.

It is a second chance.

.

Ben learns quickly, gleaning from the nuns’ minds how his uncle lived his life. He exchanges his black underthings for his uncle’s old robes, a worn comfortable grey. He learns to fish with Luke’s old spear and gather vegetables from the hillsides. Green milk, Ben does without.

He learns the island, the caves and passages tucked like secrets all over its mound. Rey ran off with the ancient texts, but other knowledge remains in more lasting forms. The walls are adorned with carvings, with mosaics and intricate paintings. The iconography is nearly incomprehensible, a jumbled tapestry of old symbols and abstruse logic. Ben treats it as a puzzle. He learns to collect sap from the islands’ plants and makes his annotations, crouching before the artwork and painting his newfangled interpretations onto fresh stone tablets.

He learns of the Force's ancient patterns, light and dark. They tell him of a world between worlds, a connective tissue that binds places strong in the Force, though any record of how to purposefully access it has long since faded.

He keeps up his strength, trading his old saber for a staff of hardy wood and running through every drill he ever learned— Snoke’s exercises, but Luke’s too. He weaves Sith and Jedi forms and fights, imagining a sparring partner instead of empty air. He sprints around the mountain, retracing the archaic steps, preserving the strength of his body.

He rediscovers something thought lost, locked in his childhood: the strength of his mind.

After many months he deigns to meditate, legs properly crossed beneath him, hands resting on his knees, eyes closed. He learns to reach back out, not to _take_ from the Force but simply to know it. A tension embraces him, light and dark swirling in perfect balance.

He has known this balance before, with her.

.

He knows Rey is alive, despite Palpatine’s best efforts, despite the damage his lightning dealt to their bond. At first he had felt her yearning, a steady undercurrent beneath his own, yet in time their pain swirled with peace, softening to calm. Now she roams across all the stars and revels in her power and her newfound freedom. Before he would beg the Force to claim him once more, to spirit him back through the world between worlds and into her arms.

Now, he smiles up at those stars and hopes that Rey is happy. He smiles through the tears and hopes she's stopped searching for him, content to find her happiness in another’s arms. 

.

Ben learns to live on a single kiss.

.

He dismisses it as wishful thinking. He’s felt twinges in the years before— a spectral hand brushing his face, phantom lips pressed against his own— and found nothing but empty air. 

Still the Force calls him from sleep. Face dappled with sunlight, he rises from the old bed of Rey's that he has long since claimed as his own, and emerges into the new day. Idly he wanders to the island’s edge…

And finds the Falcon.

The Force calls, and he runs towards the cave, not daring to hope.

He dives into the lake, body entering the water gracefully, quietly, and emerges in a half-lit cavern. Rey stands before him, both hands outstretched towards the cave’s cracked wall, waiting.

He approaches, his shadow at first refracted and split by the mirror— two phantoms walking besides each other. Yet as he draws close to her, they converge into a single whole.

Barely daring to breathe, he reaches out and places his hands over hers, finds them solid and warm and real, and in harmony their faces crack into brilliant smiles, as the mirror’s frost melts to show the simplest picture in all the galaxy. 

Them, together.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the Reylo fandom's meta on how Exegol and Ahch-To are connected by the World Between Worlds. The cleverness of this fandom dazzles me!


End file.
